A Moment of Forever
by Andi Horton
Summary: It takes a strong woman to hold her future in her hand, and then let it go. But who wants to live in the shadow of another lost love, anyway? Joan Redfern & John Smith, with hints of Rose & Doctor. Spoilers to the end of Family of Blood.


A Moment of Forever

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It was his voice that made me see it first; hearing him speak with another man's words, another man's mannerisms –indeed, another man's very self– was what first made me see that something had got to be done, and if anybody was to do it, it was to be he.

As a child, I was always the practical one. Mother said it came of calling me Joan, and I expect she was right– I have found that we Joans have such precious little imagination, and nothing in the way of whimsy. But with the addition of a John, it seems, even Joans may find themselves growing whimsical, and over the course of the time I spent with him, it did happen. I laughed more than I had in years, and found myself daring to hope that it could, in fact, happen twice. Not quite the same as before, of course . . . this was nothing I had ever felt before. It was newer; softer, somehow, and sweeter, and yet at the same time, it felt as old as time. I adored it, and yes, I will confess it, I found myself falling in love with it- with the very idea of falling in love. Which was why it came as such a dreadful jolt to hear that strange man speaking through my own John, forcing me to realise that the time for whimsy had passed, and once again, I needed to be practical.

She was frantic, that girl, and precious good it was doing us. Timothy could hardly be expected to know what to do, either, and I didn't intend on asking either one of them, but the journal –his dear, humble little journal– was in my hands, and surely, I thought, if there was any clue to be had as to what we were facing, it would be found in there. Flying to the window and the little light it offered, I turned directly to the end.

His script was muddled and yet precise all at once, and I had found over the past few days that it was easiest understood if one read it quickly, and didn't take the time to think too hard about any of it. That made finding where I had left off something of a chore, but on picking out the spot I began to read, and only read faster when young Timothy, sounding something between a frightened child and a battle-hardened man, spoke up.

"It's getting closer."

And then I found it. And as John –poor, dear, frightened John– declared his intent to surrender the watch only, I looked up, and told him.

"Then it all ends in destruction."

I don't know how I kept my voice from breaking. Mother said I had either heart of stone or a will of iron, but neither one was true at that moment, for my will was utterly lacking and my heart was rent in two. But I simply had to tell him– any other way just wouldn't be fair.

I told him of the things he had written in his journal in the voice of this man who spoke through him in dreams. I told him what he had said, of all who would die for his surrender to his own humanity; a war for every child those creatures produced. If such a legacy could be prevented, then surely, at any cost . . . it was the only solution, and one had to be practical about it, surely, even if one's very soul was being split.

But not with others watching. There is something indecent about your soul dying while others watch, and they were watching John whilst his was bared. I asked them to leave before I went to him and held him, and he wept as I wished I could.

"If I could do this instead of you, then I would." I sat beside him, watching as he studied the watch –that terrible, ugly thing shrouded in the guise of something so wonderfully ordinary– and wished I could make him see that it wasn't what I wanted, merely what I knew had to be done. "I had hoped . . ." and I looked down, because my hopes seemed so feeble next to what we faced. "But my hopes aren't important."

John, though, was thinking of something else. Voice ragged, eyes hunted, he looked at me.

"He won't love you."

I had guessed that already. I had read the journal, after all, and if part of it were true then it needs must all be, surely. Which meant there was already somebody he had loved; the wealth of feeling with which he had infused his artwork, and the haunted eyes of the woman he had drawn spoke more to his feeling for her than a lifetime of books and words and sonnets ever could have. He had loved her, and he had lost her, just as I was losing John now. There had been people he had loved and lost across centuries, and a little English nurse, the daughter of a banker's clerk and a schoolteacher, simply didn't fit the mould. But that, somehow, just made it easier.

"If he's not you," I said, and tried to make him see how true it was, "then I don't want him to."

I'm rubbish at explanations, at making people see what's going on in my head and in my heart when I want them to understand why I'm doing something, but I felt I owed him one anyhow. "I had one husband and he died. I never thought . . . ever again . . . and then you . . ." But if I thought on it too much, I'd never go through with it. "So."

"And it was real, wasn't it," he said. And it had been. "I really thought-"

And I had too. But if I thought on it any harder, I would never let him go, so I squared my shoulders and nodded at the watch.

"Let me see."

He passed it over and I held it; I turned it over, looking at it, loathing it. And yet why does one hate anything, but that one cannot understand it, and is scared of it? It wasn't a fearsome thing; it was just a watch. I shook my head, marvelling at my own idiocy.

"Blasted thing. Blasted, blasted thing . . . I can't even hear it. It's . . . nothing to me." But I hated that it was nothing. Because from what had happened as he held it, I knew it was something to him.

And then he touched me. His hand crossed between us, and grasped mine, around the watch, and held as if he knew, at just that moment, that there was no way we could ever let go.

And I saw it.

It will be a mystery to me always, how it happened, but I saw it. There was everything that he had already been, all swirling around us like a great and dreadful thing come suddenly to life, and I saw it all but I wasn't looking at it, because I was somewhere else, and I was seeing something far sweeter than what had been- I saw what could be. As if looking back across a lifetime, I saw all that we could do as if it had already been done. The church walls around us and John at my side; the band he placed on my finger was new-minted, gleaming gold. Such extravagance, in a time of such want, but he had insisted.

"Wars and worlds will come and go, Joanie, but you and I– we're forever." And he had kissed me, and I thought, for just a moment, that the clouds had parted just for us. With glorious chimes the wedding bells pealed, and through a swirl of lace and satin I saw him- my dear, ordinary John, smiling with such extraordinary joy, simply because we were us, and always would be . . .

"William! Joanie, look, look what we've done, it's our own sweet William."

Such agony and joy, bound up in one mewling infant . . . John, terror and wonder in his eyes as he held him, the person we had made.

"Sweet William." And I kissed them both . . .

"Violet! Violet, slow down! Mummy, Papa, she's _beating_ me!"

"Then run faster, son!" John, laughing, walked at my side. They raced on ahead, our eldest two, and between us swung Rose, her hand warming my hand and her giggles, my heart, as she tipped her dear little face to stare at the morning sky . . .

They grew up; all three of them, the years passing in an eyeblink, grew up and had their weddings, their children, their joys that were my own, and there we were, John and I, always at the centre of it, together, just . . . just us. And it was such a blessed, ordinary thing, just being us, and even as he lay in bed, even as I held that precious hand and watched his head sink into the pillow, I could not scorn the sweet simplicity of it all.

"They're all safe, aren't they?"

They were. And they were ours. And we loved them. And when he said it was time, it didn't hurt as I had expected it to, because he was right, it _was_ time; he knew it better than anyone.

Then I was back, jerked as if by a hand through everything I had seen, through everything I knew, with a sick, heavy sadness, that neither of us would ever be a part of.

And I knew, now, who to pity more than I did myself.

"Did you see?" He was so desperately incredulous . . . I wanted to weep. But Joans don't, in such situations, and I am nothing if not a Joan.

"The time lord has such adventures," I said softly, and tried not to think of what else I had seen haunting his mind– the lovely face and blinding smile of a girl who had danced through his heart and left it broken, for me to find, "but he could never have a life like that."

And John, my dear, good John, looked so heartsick.

"And yet I could," he said, wildly hopeful. I straightened a bit.

"What are you going to do?" I asked, but it wasn't so much a question as that sort of bracing thing one says to a patient when one knows something painful is about to happen. He stared back at me, wild, hunted . . . haunted by things neither of us quite understood.

"I could . . . I could stay," he whispered hoarsely. "Stay with you . . ."

"But at what cost?" I wondered. And his face closed over, and we both looked at the watch. "My darling." I reached out, and touched his hand with mine. "My so very good man . . . he may not love me, but I shall always, _always_ love you."

And then he voiced it; the choice we'd both known he'd have to make, to leave me, to leave us, and turn his back on the beautiful thing we had seen. I did ask, though, that he excuse himself before he opened it. Because as practical as we are, even Joans don't like to watch as the men we love die, and after all I had seen, I knew that was what would happen.

I knew what he was; I knew, finally, about that other part of him, the part that was so lost to another woman that once he got that part back, he would never look at me the same way again. I knew about the part that would steal my John back as if he had never been, and I knew, too, that when that other part of him returned, whatever happened to John, he wouldn't be _him_ anymore. He would be a man in mourning for a rival I had never met, somebody he had loved as deeply and as simply as I loved him, even now. And I just didn't think I could bear it, watching him go; not after holding all eternity and one perfect, golden lifetime in the palm of my hand.

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**A.N.:** I'm afraid _Family of Blood_ just about gutted me, and after I had cried my eyes out, I felt the need to write this. I only hope it suited! I've actually had it posted at my LJ for a while now and somebody suggested I should post it here, so here I am, being all suggestible.

Now, obviously I am in no way, shape or form affiliated with the BBC and am writing this purely for pleasure, rather than profit, but I won't turn you down if you offer to review!


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